Measuring Decline
Introduction
Data
Data on Property Taxes, Elementary Education Expenditure, Private Industry and Total GDP at the county, commuting zone, state, and national levels.
Relationships Between the Variables
Defining Decline
What would be great is to be able to econometrically test when a county is “declining.” In the first step, it would be good to identify when a county is declining overall (GDP, poverty, etc) but ideally eventually apply this to the education outcome. My hope is that being able to identify counties that are “declining” we can either use this variable as a covariate or as a central point of analysis. The below analysis looks at state-level variables as a first step (mainly to aid in visual comparison and plotting). This has now been expanded to county and commuting zones levels.
Some current options:
- Simple time trends
Exhibit national or state-level GDP growth as global common factor; counties with negative factor loadings might arguably exhibit decline (_)
Jennie’s suggestion:
- plot county- , CZ, or state-level deviations from a national trend
One way to look at this descriptively is to look at the national, state and county-level trends. Here the “trend” is simply the difference between expenditure per pupil at the relevant level and expenditure per pupil in the first available observation as represented here: https://www.princeton.edu/~erossi/DTNLC.pdf. (Note: this measure is imperfect for many reasons).
Trend in log Elementary Education Expenditure (growth rate). The below plots show the coefficient estimate on the time-step variable in the trend equation. In the first panel I include no additional controls but in the latter two panels I include the state and national level growth rates as controls.
Trend in log Real GDP (growth rate). The below plots show the coefficient estimate on the time-step variable in the trend equation. In the first panel I include no additional controls but in the latter two panels I include the state and national level growth rates as controls.
Progress on Jennie’s Suggestion
- National data on GDP, UER, and poverty
State data on GDP, UER, and poverty
Extract trends of state and national data
Deviations at county level from national and state-level trends
Plot deviations
Saturation to find structural breaks in these deviations
Result: UE, GDP, and Poverty gaps
PCA on those three gaps
Retain index from PCA
Step break in index
Line up with any notable events?
Place “gaps” in a panel structure for break detection
Autocorrelation plot to test no residual autocorrelation in model above with PCA indices.
Supplementary Materials
Cointegration testing
Suggestions from Jennie:
Engle-Granger Test - bivariate scenario
Johanson Test - multivariate setting [GDP, Property Taxes, Ed. Spending]
Autocorrelation
First-differences
Autocorrelation (Education only) (X)
Correlation plots (X)
Cross-correlation plot of Education and GDP (X)
Are GDP and Education Expenditure cointegrating (or do they exhibit a decoupling?) (_)
Autocorrelation
First-differences
Correlation Plots (Education and GDP)
Cross-correlation of Educ Exp and Priv. Industry GDP
Autocorrelations of series 'X', by lag
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
-0.051 -0.019 -0.225 -0.376 -0.146 -0.043 0.316 0.632 0.555 0.293 0.001
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-0.418 -0.199 -0.196 -0.028 0.230 -0.099 -0.118 -0.016 -0.081 -0.040
Autocorrelations of series 'X', by lag
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
-0.224 -0.172 -0.120 0.009 0.227 0.532 0.439 0.313 -0.038 -0.064 0.087
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.013 -0.068 -0.104 -0.184 -0.154 -0.038 -0.120 0.002 -0.327 -0.170
Autocorrelations of series 'X', by lag
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
-0.373 -0.107 -0.201 -0.145 -0.145 -0.191 0.203 0.343 0.581 0.698 0.237
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-0.147 -0.061 -0.198 -0.115 -0.235 -0.285 -0.131 -0.256 -0.084 -0.002
Autocorrelations of series 'X', by lag
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
-0.004 -0.036 -0.164 -0.287 -0.272 -0.127 0.036 0.141 0.365 0.557 0.101
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.115 0.171 0.051 -0.189 -0.155 -0.091 -0.201 -0.250 -0.061 0.030
Autocorrelations of series 'X', by lag
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
0.012 0.012 -0.046 0.041 -0.176 0.032 0.028 0.345 0.239 0.436 0.116
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0.000 -0.203 -0.051 -0.068 0.023 -0.325 -0.138 -0.115 -0.067 -0.216
Autocorrelations of series 'X', by lag
-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0
0.085 -0.158 0.351 -0.392 -0.041 0.600 -0.462 -0.188 0.156 0.079 -0.018
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-0.282 0.231 0.100 -0.187 0.053 0.052 0.095 0.014 0.128 -0.062